Education + Tech

Education & Tech, was created to build hope that education based on social technologies, can transform the new century, and enable abundance not only spiritually but economically. Milton Ramirez, Ed.D. - @tonnet is the founder & editor. He is a teacher, tech blogger, writes on education, and hails this blog from Union, NJ. For further questions, tips or concerns please e-mail him to:miltonramirez [at] educationandtech [dot] com

Teacher + Scholar

If you are a regular to Blog Education & Tech, you shall remember that I am a blogger and I'd written a post about education almost everyday since 2003. Education & Tech provides you with education news, expert tech advice, classroom management ideas, and social media tools for educators, administrators, parents and k-12 students.

We found this post bookmarked in the old archives. It is a way of work for us to bookmark interesting information to look it over when we are not in a rush. If it wasn't for we had to reload our bookmarks, this post probably will never be commented.

I don't quite remember exactly when was the last time I read on Twitter that teachers were to quit their jobs. If is not for the recession, there would be plenty at this moment.

I came by Jane Byers Goodwin's blog, she is an experienced teacher in the public education system and she goes by @Mamacita on Twitter. Mrs. Bayers has written twice the post I am about to mention and Jane has good reasons to do it, it is time to stop rewarding the brats and disruptive kids in our schools. But as she says, problem begins at home when brats and bullies happen to be the very same parents. Read clearly, I am talking about the kids who can not help themselves to go to school or at least make a elemental effort to complete their assignments.

I will speak for myself, I was working on a Catholic school back in the 2003 and I had good reasons to relate to many teachers in public schools. A small but significative proportion of teens, youngsters or pupils just don't want to be at school. They say they are attending school not because of their own sake, but parents compelling them to do so. Under this circumstances, a teacher feels as he chose the wrong career, and for some, the solution seems to be to change level of work, form high school to elementary school or middle school. Unfortunately, that is not a solution, they are landing a new problem.

...If you are not a teacher, it’s hard to comprehend the heartbreak these teachers feel: they love their students; they love teaching; they love every single thing about their jobs...except for the fact that they are required to endure what nobody else in any other profession would ever consider enduring. They’re required to watch the bright and promising students injured and taunted and threatened by 'other kinds' of students, and they’re required to see those 'other kinds' of students rewarded for things the nice kids do daily. They’re required to give exceptions to the undeserving and nothing to the deserving. After a while, their nerves are shot and their own self-esteem is in the dirt. Decisions they make are overturned, their authority is questioned and shot full of holes. Daily. They’re not paid enough to put up with this crap. Nobody is. This kind of thing should not even EXIST in our public schools. In the olden days, students were expected to behave and required to behave, and any kid who chose to 'act up' got punished at school and punished again at home for disgracing the family. Kids who continued to 'act up' were expelled. Life is full of choices.

I taught public school for 26 years and my salary peaked out at 49,300. After 26 years. It became sooo not worth it. A hundred thou a year would not have been worth it. The constant disruptions, the constant expectations that certain kids would not be held accountable, the constant accusations of favoritism and wrongdoing and the 23-minute lunch at 10:30 a.m. and the study hall with 48 non-participatory boys, many of whom had to sit on the floor because the room was too small for that many desks, the indignant parents who demanded...actually, demanded ANYTHING. Nice people do not DEMAND. And if someone is DEMANDING an exception, he/she is not a nice person. Teachers don’t leave because of the money. People don’t become teachers for the money. People become teachers because of the dedication and the love, and teachers leave because there is absolutely no support any more.

You are waiting to hear about a solution. Ask parents to assume full responsibility of their sons, so teachers can concentrate on dealing with teaching rather than babysitting or police students.

Until society, parents and after that teachers and administrators aren't able to straightforward their responsibilities, we will continue to pay tribute to those who act negatively, kill not only imagination but people and appear on TV not to educate but to abuse the social image they have.

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I was attending the all popular now #edchat and organized every Tuesday at 7 PM EST. on Twitter. It has been a great opportunity to know more participants, but also to learn a bit more about Differentiated Instruction (DI).

If you missed the online session, here we give you the opportunity to catch some tweets which we believe are worth reading:

We must not confuse DI with constructivism. Both are helpful, but they are not the same thing. @CorinaFiore

Criterion referenced tests do not force one dimensional teaching and are not designed to cause failures. @BeckyFisher73

Main objective of DI is to provide a learning environment that will maximize the potential for student success. @NMHS_Principal

Differentiated instruction without differentiated assessment is all talk. @TedPugliese

With his tips on tagging Web site bookmarks, shortening URLs and installing browser applications, Tony Vincent may have sounded at times Wednesday like he was talking to a group of Web developers.

But Vincent was talking to teachers, and the theme of the workshop was just as much about engaging students as it was technology.

Students are engaged in learning when it involves qualities such as choice, affiliation, novelty and variety, and a focus on products, Vincent said. The explosion of teaching technology on the Web fits right in with those values.

"Those Web 2.0 tools have so many of the characteristics of what engages students, because they do get to interact with each other, they do get to create," he said